Marketing and Maria Luisas - Countdown to the Photo Opening

The director of the Cultural Institute says people will stay home – watch television and drink beer – their usual Rioverde Friday night routine. Falta de education, ni modo, what can you do, he tells me. Get a small cake, he advises.

But I’ve ordered a huge cake from my friend Sofia, chocolate with strawberries and cream inside, and decorated with the US and Mexico flags and Peace Corps seal. Let them eat cake, I say. I have to believe that if people have access to culture, if they are invited and treated with respect and elegance, they will be respectful and elegant. Or, in the words of my late Grandma Lena, ‘Ya just put it…[and they will eat].’ We’ll see how her Italian-American sentiment translates in Mexico.

To be sure, my publicity machine is in action. The announcements are up on the bulletin boards and shop windows all around town. They feature my first-place photo, Por, Para y Con La Gente, my fellow PCV Christian reaching out to an ‘ancieanita’ at one of the Agenda 21 foros, looking like he’s about to propose. I hope it will make as much of impression on the Rioverdenses as it did on the judges.

I’ve also gone virtual with my invites, posting to Facebook and Gmail, so my north of the border friends and family know they are welcome. But in this high-touch, high-context environment, personal conversations and word of mouth are key. So I wander around town handing-out half-page flyers, talking to shop owners and vendors – to Juan my papas man (who sells the best hand-made chips in town), Pearla the cheese lady (who makes and sells a smoked provolone my Uncle Vinnie would die fo'), my favorite cop, the one that crosses me every day at the corner of Montezcuma y Martinez. But Enrique tells me he has verguenza, which I look up and discover means shame. I have read about the Mexican shame in Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude. It is complex and crippling. This show is about pride - mine and theirs. The next day I find Enrique guarding the entrance to the Ayuntamiento and insist he come as my guest. I hand him a flyer. He nods and smiles shyly, looking at Christian's photo. A lo mejor, I’ll do my best, he says, which I've learned is a polite way of saying no.

I invite the senoritas at the Yogurlandia and the owners at Amore Café where I go for peace and quiet and cold cappuccinos a few days a week. I invite the students in my yoga class at Gim Atletica, my Semarnat countarparts, and of course, and especially, my new crew of mujeres of Puente del Carmen. Nereyda the jueza promises she will turn-out a crowd.

I make an announcement at the Tuesday directors’ meeting in the mayor’s office; then gaie a spontaneous press conference with Comunicacion Social and various small town TV and newspaper reporters about who I am, why I am here, what the peace corps 50 means to me…and what my photography’s got to do with it. Luckily it wasn’t truly spontaneous; I’d been warned, and I had my Powerpoint pitch ready to go.

I’ve learned over the years, with ten-plus art events under my belt, it’s not just about being out in the field, seeing, framing, shooting the fotos; nor is it the processing and printing, nor naming and hanging them to create the visual experience. Perhaps if I were a REAL artist I would stop there. But you have to get people in the gallery – it’s their participation, reaction, discussion, mere presence in the room that makes the difference – that makes it art.

I want to show them all the complexities I see in this place – see if they see the same - the live and the abstract, the old and young, the wistful and content, the serene and the chaotic, el bonito y feo – la comida, la natureza, la pobreza. Much harder for me than the marketing is the selecting, the excluding. I feel like I can’t trust myself to choose. What will they like? What will make them stop and think? What embodies the truth?

Kuko, an artist from the Casa Cultura, has volunteered to lend his eye to hep me narrow the field. Why the window, he asks, as I scroll thru the semi-finals folder in Photoshop. I don’t know, the color, the light. He's perplexed, he comes back to it, my favorite, he says. Such a common site – people will wonder. I keep that one in. The pile of corn draws his attention too, never saw it up that close. It’s in. So is Serapio my elote man with his wry smile – Kuko knows him and says he’s as funny as his picture. He’s in – and so is Flying Niña. Kuko smiles when he sees her.

I’ve been referred to Galvan to do the printing – I use his automated Kodak system to do the final cropping and sizing; it’s computer-prompted in Spanish, and I lose my portfolio of edits twice and have to start all over. But it’s worth it – his colors pop, the contrast are good, and his prices are a fraction of what I pay in DC. A good thing too, because I am already three-times over my $100 Peace Corps budget; the rest, an investment, I will happily pay out of pocket.

Mary at the Casa de Marcos is my final step – the framing shop. She’s an attentive business woman with a slightly reckless hand – I cringe as she thumbs through the prints – luckily they are matt finish and will not smear. She orders the matt board on the spot, over the phone – and promises they will be mounted and matted to my specs and ready Wednesday. I confirm that it will be beveled, acid-free, loose-mounted. She nods like she knows what I’m saying – we draw pictures and use samples to confirm. I can’t afford surprises two days before the show must be hung.

In this dusty shop littered with prints of the pope, Jesus, and Virgincita, wedding photos and Mexican dicho plaques, we get to talking. Mary and her husband have been in business 35 years. They admire my shot of La Planta, wonder why I am here in Rioverde, get up the nerve to ask me. And then the floodgates open: they invite me on a tour of some other favorite historic spots, San Sabastian and the baroque church in Pastora. I learn from them that matts are called Maria Luisias in Spanish - I ask why, but I don't understand the answer - I'm not sure they know either.

As I walk out, into the quiet Comida-time streets of Rioverde, relieved I'm one step closer to my goal, I stop, realize I’m learning a whole new vocabulary in this process. In all the rushing I almost forgot - the point of was all the learning, the connecting, not just the result, the images that will be on the walls in a few days’ time.

Luckily, I keep having the opportunity to re-learn this lesson in Mexico.